Mary Trump, the estranged niece of President Donald Trump, wrote on Thursday that “the one thing” her uncle has always feared most is “to be seen as a loser”—and the humiliation she says comes with it.
A longtime critic of the president, Mary Trump published Too Much and Never Enough in 2020, a book about the Trump family in which she argued he is “utterly incapable of leading this country and it’s dangerous to allow him to do so.” After the book’s release, Donald Trump called it “disgraceful” and told former Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace that Mary “was not exactly a family favorite,” adding, “We didn’t have a lot of respect or like for her.”
In her latest post on her Substack, The Good in Us, Mary Trump opened with a blunt assessment: “The one thing Donald has always feared most is to be seen as a loser and the humiliation that comes with that.”
She argued that a combination of factors has intensified that fear, writing that “Given the perfect storm of his incompetence, increasing decline across several categories (the psychological, the cognitive, and the physical); and the sense that he is losing control—over himself and the narrative—and the desperation that goes along with that, it was perhaps inevitable that humiliation has come to stalk him at every turn.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly denied claims of decline, whether cognitive or medical. During a Thursday appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump was photographed with a new bruise on his hand. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded in a statement to Newsweek, saying, “At the Board of Peace event today in Davos, President Trump hit his hand on the corner of the signing table, causing it to bruise.”
Trump, 79, became the oldest person to take office as president in January 2024. In recent months, questions have surfaced about his age after he has been seen with bruising, though Trump has insisted he is in perfect health.
Mary Trump also warned that, in her view, the consequences of her uncle’s conduct are not limited to him. “Unfortunately for the rest of us, his humiliation is ours,” she wrote. She added, “Donald may be the one threatening and insulting our closest allies; he may be the one giving the orders, but it is, rightly, America that the rest of the world condemns.”
Pointing to his Wednesday speech in Davos, she described it as evidence of “the degree to which he is psychologically, emotionally, and cognitively unfit to lead.” She ended by criticizing those around him: “The silence of Donald’s enablers is tantamount to complicity.”
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung has previously dismissed her criticisms, telling Newsweek, “Mary Trump is a stone-old [sic] loser who doesn’t have a clue about anything.”
Some Democrats have also raised concerns about Trump’s mental fitness, with some pushing to invoke the 25th Amendment over his rhetoric relating to Greenland.
What Happens Next
Mary Trump is expected to remain a vocal critic of the president as he faces ongoing scrutiny over the economy and his foreign policy—particularly Greenland and Venezuela—while Congress looks ahead to the 2026 midterms.
